Comments on: I Said No To Text-Link-Ads

By: Asylum-ET

2009-04-07T08:23:15Z

Personally I think if Google or some other search engine doesn’t like paid links then they should overlook them and move on if they suspect that they were paid. It would also be just as simple for them to look for a special HTML comment to identify the paid links so they are not counted by the search engine. Anything outside of this is just the search engine trying to bully you into submission and possibly the use of their own ad services which I refuse to use Adsense since they have zeroed our balance out on a number of occasions claiming click fraud. Awful funny that there was no issue and this has only happened every single time we have reached the payout amount. Also find it awful funny that in their response to our emails to them they admit that it was their system that screwed things up yet they are going to keep our money anyway.

I sell links on my websites to help pay the costs of hosting and maintaining the websites. I do not make a fortune off of them. If I do not sell the ads then I must charge my users to use the site which they are less likely to continue coming to the sites if they have to pay to use them.

I only sell links that are specific in category to what my sites are about. Still Google has dropped my PR4-5 website to PR 0 because of this. They are penalizing us for their own inequities.

I say to heck with Google. Now that they have used all of us to get so big they don’t care about us any more. Well I am back to using Yahoo, MSN, Live or any other that is NOT Google.

By: böcek ilaçlama

2009-01-22T21:33:32Z

what a long article. I tired when I read this post. But your article had been effective. Thanks so much for this post

By: Asylum

2008-08-02T06:54:17Z

We use text link ads on our websites. We are not dishonest about them being sponsored as they are. We do not use nofollow although that should not make a difference either way to an advertiser. Most ads are in place for a month. Not long enough to make a difference in any page rank as it is likely the link will not be there the next time the page is crawled. The purpose of buying the link in the first place may not be for the page rank as that would make very little sense. Rather it is to drive traffic to your website. That is all and a nofollow in place makes no difference for that. Just the same if it violates the TLA TOS then don’t do it or don’t use them. Pretty simple. They fetch you top dollar for your links though so why complain. As for altering their ad code… We have done this as well. We had to due to the default code breaking our layout. We contacted TLA and submitted our changes to them. They have not had an issue with this at all. Key point being “we contacted them in regard to the changes” The way I view TLA is that they find links relative to my websites content that in turn give my users something of relevance to look at and they saved me the time of having to scour the internet to find those that are actually interested in a link on our site. The payment is for the real estate that the links consume and that is all. If google does not like that we offer these links than that is just to bad for google. We do not base our actions on what google thinks as they are nothing to us other than a small percentage of our traffic. If they don’t like it we do not care. They can crawl elsewhere. If more people took on our attitude google’s pull in these areas would diminish. Take back control of the internet and take it out of the hands of corporate conglomerates such as google.

By: Andreas

2008-01-01T18:18:49Z

Thanks for this post, it was very useful! I\’ve had a successful co-operation with TLA, making up to $900 during the peak months, and they have always been fair to me. But when I asked about adding rel=\”nofollow\” and about risks with sponsored links without the nofollow added, I was told to just be smart and not write out that the links were sponsored. That wouldn\’t be honest, and I wouldn\’t want to be seen as dishonest even by Google. I have now removed my TLA links (directly after the payment for december came), and will not put them back until the rel=\”nofollow\” is in place. Until then, I will manage all advertisements on my site all by myself to make sure it is done in a way that keeps everyone happy.

By: Angsuman Chakraborty

2007-12-11T06:16:45Z

Brandon,

1. When text-link-ads first launched and I signed up this clause wasn’t in the contract.

2. When I signed up, text-link-ads allowed you to customize the links based on an API example they provided. They encouraged customization. I used it to add nofollow links, fully following their guidelines.

Hope that clairifies,
Angsuman

By: Brandon - Call Center Consultant

2007-12-11T00:47:07Z

Sorry, quote didn’t work:

http://www.text-link-ads.com/agreement.php

section 9a: The publisher is not permitted to alter the ad script provided by the Company in any way without written consent from Text Link Ads while delivering the advertisements.

By: Brandon - Call Center Consultant

2007-12-11T00:36:23Z

Section 9a says, \

By: Aizat

2007-11-27T16:19:22Z

You are very good negotiating with them.
Congrats on your payment.
Before this I am using blogspot to blog. I got PR2 and then I just start my own blog. Do visit me back and help me with blogging. Thanx Angsuman

By: Aizat

2007-11-27T16:13:30Z

You are very great at negotiating with them.
Finally managed to get your payment.
Good job Angsuman.

By: Varun

2007-11-11T14:54:01Z

Hey Angsuman,

How did you change their output code and add the nofollow ? did you hardcode the links ?

By: Angsuman Chakraborty

2007-10-03T18:20:17Z

Welcome to the club

By: Scott Yang

2007-10-02T23:45:32Z

Just got a similar email from Brock. Moreover he also asked me to change the heading “Sponsored Links” to something like “Friends”.

Guess what have I replied?

Except to be fair to the advertisers I asked them not to pay me so the money can be refunded. Again, I’ll leave it to their conscience whether they actually refund the money

By: Bashar

2007-09-30T11:09:58Z

Thanks for the post. Nice to see people giving away money for the good of search quality. I am interested in such a service, selling my space but no faking a link. Is there any good alternative?

By: Jonathan

2007-08-09T19:11:39Z

When it comes down to it, ads in Javascript are called AdSense using AdWords, not text links.

They are completely separate industries and should be treated as such.

By: Mark Jaquith

2007-07-25T23:13:52Z

Bravo. I almost did the same thing. I still can’t find anything on their site about rel="nofollow". I’d have Text-Link-Ads on my site in a second if they could be “nofollowed.” Of course, I knew their angle and what the end game would be. Still, I’m glad someone challenged them on it.

By: emigre

2007-07-09T02:43:48Z

This is interesting…I guess no one ever gave it a second thought. It’s simply assumed that links - paid or unpaid - on the sidebar especially are automatically “follow”.

From an advertiser’s viewpoint, why would they want to pay for a link that is “nofollow”?